Hamlet

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Claudius, King of Denmark

Hamlet, son to the late, and nephew to the present king

Polonius, lord chamberlain

Horatio, friend to Hamlet

Laertes, son to Polonius

Voltimand, a courtier

Cornelius, a courtier

Rosencrantz, a courtier

Guildenstern, a courtier

Osric, courtier

A Gentleman

A Priest

Marcellus, an officer

Bernardo, an officer

Francisco, a soldier

Reynaldo, servant to Polonius

Players

Two Clowns, grave-diggers

Fortinbras, Prince of Norway

A Captain

English Ambassadors

Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, and mother to Hamlet

Ophelia, daughter to Polonius

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and other Attendants

Ghost of Hamlet’s Father

ACT II, Scene II

Enter Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

POLONIUS: Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET: These tedious old fools!

POLONIUS: You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.

ROSENCRANTZ [TO POLONIUS]: God save you, sir!

[Exit Polonius.]

GUILDENSTERN: My honoured lord!

ROSENCRANTZ: My most dear lord!

HAMLET: My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ: As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN: Happy, in that we are not over-happy; On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET: Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ: Neither, my lord.

HAMLET: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?

GUILDENSTERN: ’Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET: In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What’s the news?

ROSENCRANTZ: None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.

HAMLET: Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

1

GUILDENSTERN: Prison, my lord!

HAMLET: Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.

HAMLET: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ: We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET: Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Why then, your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET: O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN: Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET: A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ: Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET: Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN: We’ll wait upon you.

2

HAMLET: No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ: To visit you, my lord: no other occasion.

HAMLET: Beggar that I am, I am ever poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.

GUILDENSTERN: What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET: Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ: To what end, my lord?

HAMLET: That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no?

ROSENCRANTZ [ASIDE TO GUILDENSTERN]: What say you?

HAMLET [ASIDE]: Nay, then, I have an eye of you.-If you love me, hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN: My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET: I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late-but wherefore I know not-lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET: Why did you laugh then, when I said “man delights not me”?

ROSENCRANTZ: To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you: we coted them on the way; and hither are they coming, to offer you service.

HAMLET: He that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humorous man shall end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle o’ the sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for’t. What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ: Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.

HAMLET: How chances it they travel? their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ: I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation.

HAMLET: Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? are they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ: No, indeed, are they not.

HAMLET: How comes it? do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ: Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for ’t: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages-so they call them-that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET: What, are they children? who maintains ’em? how are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players-as it is most like, if their means are no better-their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ: ’Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy: there was, for a while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.

HAMLET: Is’t possible?

GUILDENSTERN: O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

HAMLET: Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ: Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.

HAMLET: It is not very strange; for mine uncle is king of Denmark, and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little. ’Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.

A flourish [of trumpets within].

GUILDENSTERN: There are the players.

HAMLET: Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you, must show fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN: In what, my dear lord?

3

HAMLET: I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS: Well be with you, gentlemen!

HAMLET: Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ: Happily he is the second time come to them; for they say an old man is twice a child.

HAMLET: I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players; mark it.-You say right, sir: o’ Monday morning; ’twas then indeed.

POLONIUS: My lord, I have news to tell you.

HAMLET: My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome,-

POLONIUS: The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET: Buz, buz!

POLONIUS: Upon my honour,-

HAMLET: Then came each actor on his ass,-

POLONIUS: The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.

[ . . . ] ROSENCRANTZ: Good my lord!

Exeunt [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

HAMLET: Ay, so, God bye to you.-Now I am alone.

4

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann’d,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!

For Hecuba!

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appall the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

And can say nothing; no, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i’ th’ throat,

As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?

Ha!

’Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should have fatted all the region kites

With this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,

And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,

A stallion!

Fie upon ’t! foh! About, my brains! Hum, I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim’d their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

5

With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle: I’ll observe his looks:

I’ll tent him to the quick: if ’a do blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil: and the devil hath power

T’ assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me: I’ll have grounds

More relative than this: the play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

Exit.

Act III, Scene I

OPHELIA: Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET: I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

OPHELIA: My lord, I have remembrances of yours,

That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

HAMLET: No, not I;

I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA: My honour’d lord, you know right well you did;

And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos’d

As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

HAMLET: Ha, ha! are you honest?

OPHELIA: My lord?

HAMLET: Are you fair?

OPHELIA: What means your lordship?

HAMLET: That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA: Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

HAMLET: Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

OPHELIA: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET: You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.

OPHELIA: I was the more deceived.

6

HAMLET: Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

OPHELIA: At home, my lord.

HAMLET: Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in ’s own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA: O, help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET: If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.

OPHELIA: O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET: I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp; you nick-name God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on ’t; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.

Exit.

OPHELIA: O, what a noble mind is here o’er-thrown!

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;

Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

Th’ observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck’d the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;

That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth

Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,

T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Enter King and Polonius.

[ . . . ]

ACT III, Scene II

The trumpets sound. Dumb show follows.

Enter a King and a Queen [very lovingly]; the Queen embracing him, and he her. [She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him.] He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: he lies him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in another man, takes off his crown, kisses it, pours poison in the sleeper’s ears, leaves him. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some three or four come in again, seem to condole with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts: she seems harsh awhile, but in the end accepts his love. [Exeunt.]

OPHELIA: What means this, my lord?

HAMLET: Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

OPHELIA: Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter Prologue.

HAMLET: We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they’ll tell all.

OPHELIA: Will ’a tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET: Ay, or any show that you’ll show him: be not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.

OPHELIA: You are naught, you are naught: I’ll mark the play.

PROLOGUE: For us, and for our tragedy,

Here stooping to your clemency,

We beg your hearing patiently.

[Exit.]

HAMLET: Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA: ’Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET: As woman’s love.

Enter [two Players as] King and Queen.

PLAYER KING: Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round

Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground,

And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen

About the world have times twelve thirties been,

Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands

Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

PLAYER QUEEN: So many journeys may the sun and moon

Make us again count o’er ere love be done!

But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,

So far from cheer and from your former state,

That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,

Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:

For women’s fear and love holds quantity;

In neither aught, or in extremity.

Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;

And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so:

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;

Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

PLAYER KING: ’Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;

My operant powers their functions leave to do:

And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,

Honour’d, belov’d; and haply one as kind

For husband shalt thou-

PLAYER QUEEN: O, confound the rest!

Such love must needs be treason in my breast:

In second husband let me be accurst!

None wed the second but who kill’d the first.

HAMLET (ASIDE): Wormwood, wormwood.

PLAYER QUEEN: The instances that second marriage move

Are base respects of thrift, but none of love:

A second time I kill my husband dead,

When second husband kisses me in bed.

7

PLAYER KING: I do believe you think what now you speak;

But what we do determine oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

Of violent birth, but poor validity;

Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;

But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.

Most necessary ’tis that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.

The violence of either grief or joy

Their own enactures with themselves destroy:

Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.

This world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange

That even our loves should with our fortunes change;

For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,

Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.

The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;

The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies.

And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;

For who not needs shall never lack a friend,

And who in want a hollow friend doth try,

Directly seasons him his enemy.

But, orderly to end where I begun,

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown;

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:

So think thou wilt no second husband wed;

But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

Enter Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

POLONIUS: Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET: These tedious old fools!

POLONIUS: You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.

ROSENCRANTZ [TO POLONIUS]: God save you, sir!

[Exit Polonius.]

A flourish [of trumpets within].

Enter Polonius.

PLAYER QUEEN: Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!

Sport and repose lock from me day and night!

To desperation turn my trust and hope!

An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope!

Each opposite that blanks the face of joy

Meet what I would have well and it destroy!

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,

If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

HAMLET: If she should break it now!

PLAYER KING: ’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

[Sleeps.]

PLAYER QUEEN: Sleep rock thy brain;

And never come mischance between us twain!

Exit.

HAMLET: Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

HAMLET: O, but she’ll keep her word.

KING: Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in ’t?

HAMLET: No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ the world.

KING: What do you call the play?

HAMLET: The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke’s name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon; ’t is a knavish piece of work: but what o’ that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

Enter Lucianus.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

OPHELIA: You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

HAMLET: I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA: You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET: It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA: Still better, and worse.

HAMLET: So you mistake your husbands. Begin, murderer; pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come: the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

LUCIANUS: Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;

Confederate season, else no creature seeing;

Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,

With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,

Thy natural magic and dire property,

On wholesome life usurp immediately.

[Pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears.]

HAMLET: ’A poisons him i’ the garden for his estate. His name’s Gonzago: the story is extant, and writ in very choice Italian: you shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

OPHELIA: The king rises.

HAMLET: What, frighted with false fire!

QUEEN: How fares my lord?

POLONIUS: Give o’er the play.

KING: Give me some light: away!

POLONIUS: Lights, lights, lights!

Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.

Act III, Scene IV

Enter [Queen] Gertrude and Polonius.

POLONIUS: ’A will come straight. Look you lay home to him:

Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,

And that your grace hath screen’d and stood between

Much heat and him. I’ll sconce me even here.

Pray you, be round with him.

HAMLET (WITHIN): Mother, mother, mother!

QUEEN: I’ll warrant you,

Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.

[Polonius hides behind the arras.]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET: Now, mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET: Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN: Why, how now, Hamlet!

HAMLET: What’s the matter now?

QUEEN: Have you forgot me?

HAMLET: No, by the rood, not so:

You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife;

And-would it were not so!-you are my mother.

QUEEN: Nay, then, I’ll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET: Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;

You go not till I set you up a glass

Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN: What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?

Help, help, ho!

POLONIUS [BEHIND]: What, ho! help, help; help!

HAMLET [DRAWING]: How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

[Makes a pass through the arras.]

POLONIUS [BEHIND]: O, I am slain!

[Falls and dies.]

QUEEN: O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET: Nay, I know not:

Is it the king?

QUEEN: O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET: A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

QUEEN: As kill a king!

HAMLET: Ay, lady, it was my word.

[Lifts up the array and discovers Polonius.]

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!

I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;

Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.

Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,

And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,

If it be made of penetrable stuff,

If damned custom have not braz’d it so

That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN: What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET: Such an act

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,

Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose

From the fair forehead of an innocent love

And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows

As false as dicers’ oaths: O, such a deed

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words: heaven’s face doth glow:

O’er this solidity and compound mass,

With heated visage, as against the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN: Ay me, what act,

That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

HAMLET: Look here, upon this picture, and on this.

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

See, what a grace was seated on this brow;

Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself;

An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;

A station like the herald Mercury

New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;

A combination and a form indeed,

Where every god did seem to set his seal,

To give the world assurance of a man:

This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:

Here is your husband; like a mildew’d ear,

Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,

And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?

You cannot call it love; for at your age

The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,

And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment

Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have,

Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense

Is apoplex’d; for madness would not err,

Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thrall’d

But it reserv’d some quantity of choice,

To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t

That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,

Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,

Or but a sickly part of one true sense

Could not so mope.

O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,

If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,

And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn

And reason pandars will.

8

QUEEN: O Hamlet, speak no more:

Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET: Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty,-

QUEEN: O, speak to me no more;

These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;

No more, sweet Hamlet!

HAMLET: A murderer and a villain;

A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe

Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,

And put it in his pocket!

QUEEN: No more!

Enter Ghost.

HAMLET: A king of shreds and patches,-

Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN: Alas, he’s mad!

HAMLET: Do you not come your tardy son to chide,

That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by

Th’ important acting of your dread command?

O, say!

GHOST: Do not forget: this visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:

O, step between her and her fighting soul:

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:

Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET: How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN: Alas, how is ’t with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy

And with th’ incorporal air do hold discourse?

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;

And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’ alarm,

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,

Starts up, and stands an end. O gentle son,

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET: On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!

His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones,

Would make them capable. -Do not look upon me;

Lest with this piteous action you convert

My stern effects: then what I have to do

Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

QUEEN: To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET: Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN: Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET: Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN: No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET: Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!

My father, in his habit as he liv’d!

Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!

Exit Ghost.

QUEEN: This the very coinage of your brain:

This bodiless creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

HAMLET: Ecstasy!

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,

And makes as healthful music: it is not madness

That I have utt’red: bring me to the test,

And I the matter will re-word; which madness

Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,

That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,

Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;

Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come;

And do not spread the compost on the weeds,

To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;

For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN: O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET: O, throw away the worser part of it,

And live the purer with the other half.

Good night: but go not to mine uncle’s bed;

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,

Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,

That to the use of actions fair and good

He likewise gives a frock or livery,

That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence: the next more easy;

For use almost can change the stamp of nature,

And either . . . the devil, or throw him out

With wondrous potency. Once more, good night:

And when you are desirous to be bless’d,

I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,

[Pointing to Polonius.]

I do repent: but heaven hath pleas’d it so,

To punish me with this and this with me,

That I must be their scourge and minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him. So, again, good night.

I must be cruel, only to be kind:

Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.

One word more, good lady.

QUEEN: What shall I do?

HAMLET: Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:

Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;

Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;

And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers,

Make you to ravel all this matter out,

That I essentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know;

For who, that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,

Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,

Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?

No, in despite of sense and secrecy,

Unpeg the basket on the house’s top.

Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,

To try conclusions, in the basket creep,

And break your own neck down.

QUEEN: Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe

What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET: I must to England; you know that?

QUEEN: Alack,

I had forgot: ’tis so concluded on.

HAMLET: There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,

Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,

They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,

And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petar: and ’t shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines,

And blow them at the moon: O, ’tis most sweet,

When in one line two crafts directly meet.

This man shall set me packing:

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.

Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor

Is now most still, most secret and most grave,

Who was in life a foolish prating knave.

Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.

Good night, mother.

Exeunt [severally; Hamlet dragging in Polonius.]

Act V, Scene I

FIRST CLOWN: Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and when you are asked this question next, say “a grave-maker”: the houses he makes lasts till doomsday. Go, get thee in, and fetch me a stoup of liquor.

[Exit Second Clown.] Song. [He digs.]

In youth, when I did love, did love,

Methought it was very sweet,

To contract-O-the time, for-a-my behove,

O, methought, there-a-was nothing-a-meet.

HAMLET: Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that ’a sings at grave-making?

HORATIO: Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

HAMLET: ’Tis e’en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

FIRST CLOWN: (Song.) But age, with his stealing steps,

Hath claw’d me in his clutch,

And hath shipped me into the land,

As if I had never been such.

[Throws up a skull.]

HAMLET: That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if ’twere Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?

HORATIO: It might, my lord.

HAMLET: Or of a courtier; which could say “Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?” This might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one’s horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?

HORATIO: Ay, my lord.

HAMLET: Why, e’en so: and now my Lady Worm’s; chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton’s spade: here’s fine revolution, an we had the trick to see ’t. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with ’em? mine ache to think on ’t.

FIRST CLOWN: (Song.) A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade,

For and a shrouding sheet:

O, a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

[Throws up another skull.]

HAMLET: There’s another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in ’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

HORATIO: Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET: Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?

HORATIO: Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

HAMLET: They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose grave’s this, sirrah?

FIRST CLOWN: Mine, sir.

[Sings.]

O, a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

HAMLET: I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in ’t.

FIRST CLOWN: You lie out on ’t, sir, and therefore ’t is not yours: for my part, I do not lie in ’t, and yet it is mine.

HAMLET: ’Thou dost lie in ’t, to be in ’t and say it is thine: ’tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

FIRST CLOWN: ’Tis a quick lie, sir; ’twill away gain, from me to you.

HAMLET: What man dost thou dig it for?

FIRST CLOWN: For no man, sir.

HAMLET: What woman, then?

FIRST CLOWN: For none, neither.

HAMLET: Who is to be buried in ’t?

FIRST CLOWN: One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.

HAMLET: How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken a note of it; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe. How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

FIRST CLOWN: Of all the days i’ the year, I came to ’t that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

HAMLET: How long is that since?

FIRST CLOWN: Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that is mad, and sent into England.

HAMLET: Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

FIRST CLOWN: Why, because ’a was mad: ’a shall recover his wits there; or, if ’a do not, ’tis no great matter there.

HAMLET: Why?

FIRST CLOWN: ’Twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.

HAMLET: How came he mad?

FIRST CLOWN: Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET: How strangely?

FIRST CLOWN: Faith, e’en with losing his wits.

HAMLET: Upon what ground?

FIRST CLOWN: Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

HAMLET: How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot?

FIRST CLOWN: Faith, if ’a be not rotten before ’a die-as we have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in-’a will last you some eight year or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.

HAMLET: Why he more than another?

FIRST CLOWN: Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that ’a will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here’s a skull now; this skull has lain you i’ th’ earth three and twenty years.

HAMLET: Whose was it?

FIRST CLOWN: A whoreson mad fellow’s it was: whose do you think it was?

HAMLET: Nay, I know not.

FIRST CLOWN: A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a’ poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the king’s jester.

HAMLET: This?

FIRST CLOWN: E’en that.

HAMLET: Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

HORATIO: What’s that, my lord?

HAMLET: Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ the earth?

HORATIO: E’en so.

HAMLET: And smelt so? pah!

[Puts down the skull.]

HORATIO: E’en so, my lord.

HAMLET: To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till ’a find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO: ’Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

9

HAMLET: No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:

O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,

Should patch a wall t’expel the winter flaw!

But soft! but soft awhile! here comes the king,

Enter King, Queen, Laertes, and the Corse of [Ophelia, in procession, with Priest, Lords, etc.].

The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow?

And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken

The corse they follow did with desp’rate hand

Fordo it own life: ’twas of some estate.

Couch we awhile, and mark.

[Retiring with Horatio.]

[Pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears.]

[Polonius hides behind the arras.]